To create a great first impression (warm, professional, caring), I conducted video interviews with new members and handled every application personally, providing feedback on screening assessments, and onboarding members.

To nurture connections and contribute to members’ professional growth, I organized and hosted inclusive virtual and in-person events, including webinars, networking, workshops, and holiday parties.

To iterate the most effective ways to gather community feedback and amplify members’ voices, I ran quarterly surveys, conducted qualitative user interviews, and A/B tested different formats and presentations of questions.

To help the rest of the company understand how product decisions impact on member experience, I conducted recurring community research, distilling results into quarterly Community Health Reports to share asynchronously.

To deliver on a key value proposition of the community by connecting members to contracting opportunities, I used my relationships with members to help the recruiter team improve their workflows and communication with talent.

To grow brand awareness and provide swag for the community, I designed new merchandise with a design consultant and launched a shop.

To establish and protect a safe and constructive community space, I wrote community SOPs and handled member misbehavior as it arose.

To nurture connections and deliver content value for members, I established a community content calendar and aggregated freelancer-related content for weekly Slack posts and monthly Hubspot emails.

To empower members to self-serve, I built a knowledge base by developing community member personas and writing community guidelines.

To track and validate macro trends in the community, I deployed community analytics and data aggregation tools.

… to build a great onboarding experience for new product users, which may lead to community membership or not.

… to iterate and optimize the offboarding process for product users, reducing friction and frustration in their last-touch experience of our product and brand.

I shared responsibility for the product support email account and Zendesk helpdesk, creating support workflows and SOPs, and liaising with product team over bug reports and feature requests.

I hosted Marketing events on behalf of the community, presenting the product, introducing speakers, and interviewing speakers (with and without audience Q&A).

To onboard new members and foster a warm welcome, I created and launched a new member onboarding flow using automations.

To form new connections between different community members and build audiences for individual creators, I commented and cross-pollinated user-generated content throughout the site.

To provide comprehensive member support, I oversaw account administration (creation, deletion, member help requests).

To deliver value to community members and model exemplary behaviour, I authored and maintained a content calendar, including weekly summary and engagement posts, monthly email newsletters, and specialist community content.

To recognize and reinforce exemplary member behaviour, I delivered awards and rewards for community participation, such as milestone badges and member spotlights.

To enhance the community and improve the value we offered, I built and managed partnerships with other developer communities which were relevant to our community persona. This gave us access to feature opportunities in their community mailings and outreach, allowed us to seed content in their communities, and helped increase membership from 1k to 1.8k members during my 8-month tenure.

To transfer information and build relationships, I met with brand partners on a regular basis, supporting them to grow their brand channels on the platform by delivering education and resources. I collaborated on content creation with brand partners, featuring on their podcasts or interviewing their team members for the Ops Community.

To demonstrate the value of community to the company, I presented quarterly reports on member growth and engagement to the Head of Product Marketing and CEO.

DEV, the flagship community, had 800K registered members and received 13M visits per month, with over 200 volunteer DEV moderators in the Discord channel that I advocated for, organized, and grew.

I collaborated with moderators and community members to build sustainable growth, by fostering meaningful and healthy engagement between community members in the comments sections of posts on DEV, CodeNewbie, and Forem.dev (for OSS self-hosters).

I worked as part of a small site admin team, managing spam, and providing member account support.

I responded to Feature Requests and Bug Reports, accessing the main DEV email account and speaking on behalf of the company to members and partners.

To empower community managers from non-technical backgrounds to embrace the discomfort and lifelong learning of working with devs, Senior Community Manager, Michael Tharrington, and I co-created an Intro to DevRel course with C School, for community managers working with technical communities.

These community managers were both SaaS customers and open source community hosted.

I consulted on community strategy development for between 5-15 SaaS communities in various stages of their growth at any one time.

I created bespoke implementation guides for high-priority SaaS customers, based on the takewaways from their implementation calls (where I walked them through the implementation process, answering questions and identifying their individual needs).

I provided high-touch guidance and instruction for both types of community managers as required, including routine technical advice.

I created content in the form of tutorials and documentation.

I created programming such as webinars and events.

To provide feedback on company’s software product: writing GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests.

To advise on user-centered product development: supplementing our own software with GitHub Discussions, identifying power users, and conducting user interviews.

To troubleshoot technical issues reported by our wide range of users: I shared responsibility for the community and product support inbox, developing workflows and SOPs for handling tricky requests.

I delivered an inbound marketing strategy and sample content,

I redesigned and rewrote their website,

I developed new partnerships for fundraising opportunities, including collaborating on events.

I tactically programmed events that brought members together to share resources and stories, building networks to celebrate each others’ successes and build stronger communities.

Examples include: recurring brunches, gaming nights, speed dating-style networking events, and movie screenings.

I coordinated an in-person workshop schedule for 3D modelling and 3D printing skills, recruiting instructors, managing marketing, registrations and communications, and providing the tech and logistics.

I recruited and managed volunteer technicians to assist members with their projects, managed budget and supply levels, and liaised with the company who provided the equipment.

I developed the workplace wellness program, which included daily classes in a range of activities from yoga to Zumba, ran contests and challenges for clients and staff, and hosted special events and presentations.

I recruited and managed instructors for yoga, mindfulness, meditation, and dance classes.

I scheduled group fitness programming, including hosting and coordinating training for instructors, while also leading and coaching personal trainers team to promote, consult, sell, and deliver services to members.

I managed community operations, including space set-up according to programming and in-house events, maintenance and safety of gym equipment (including the indoor climbing wall), as well as handling booking and billing for rentals for outside events.